Effect of landscape structure on genetic structure of the Lesser horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus hipposideros) in Britanny colonies

Some species are difficult to observe and others, need to be not disturbed because of their vulnerability. In response to the difficulty of studying the dispersal behaviors of these species, some areas of biology have been combined in order to access the information despite practical limitations. Here we present the combination of several methodologies from landscape ecology to non- invasive population genetics that allow us to obtain important information on Rinolophus hipposideros, a vulnerable European bat. We genotyped 18 georeferrenced colonies in Brittany (France) from droppings collected in their refuges. We used 6 microsatellite markers in order to obtain the genetic distances between them. On the other hand we calculated Euclidian distances between the refuges occupied by these colonies and some ecological distances with the Pathmatrix module of ArcGis 3.2. We tested hypothesis about the difficulty of dispersal of the species in areas without forest cover or with a low density of hedges. Thanks to the Monmonier algorithm we could infer possible genetic barriers between the colonies and we could compare their location to the presence of landscape barriers (areas with little tree cover). We detected a pattern of isolation by distance that reveals limited dispersal capacities in the species but no pattern linked to ecological distances. We found that some of the neighboring colonies with greater genetic distances between them were located in areas with low density of hedges which could suggest an impact of this landscape element in their movements. Finer studies should allow us to conclude on the need or not of forest cover in the dispersal of this species. O_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=143 SRC="FIGDIR/small/470144v1_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1"> View larger version (65K): org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1efb190org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@17287c8org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@3072c7org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@bf84a9_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP M_FIG C_FIG